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The world's fanciest nuclear submarine, the, ahem, HMS Astute, gets stuck in the mud. Vanity Fair details the five most humiliating details about the debacle. Princeton is slashing its number of private equity managers. Want a 20% raise? Work on Wall Street. Anil Dash on why your Twitter ranking articles are wrong (that evidently includes you, MediaWeek). Has Google gone Republican? Business Insider thinks so. Why there shouldn't be a "signaling problem" for Boulder companies who don’t raise money from Foundry Group. Dan Primack thinks Kleiner's sFund will prove to be much more than a marketing masterstroke. Sequoia's Michael Moritz (and one time Time magazine writer) eloquently argues for pension reform in San Francisco. Randy Michaels resigns from Tribune Co. Finally.

GigaOm dives into the giant Web that data mining company Rapleaf has been quietly spinning. It's worth a read. R.I.P. Chatroulette. Some of us hardly knew you, while others clearly knew you too well. Evidently, people are too cheap to pay $9.95 a month for Hulu Plus, the subscription service launched in June. They love Sesame Street online, though, and its head writer explains how it's become so buzzworthy on the Internet. Office Depot settles charges by the SEC that that it and two top executives improperly contacted analysts in 2007 to help guide them to lower earnings estimates. Blackstone Group is looking to back as many as 15 new hedge funds. Is Johns Hopkins the business school for anti-MBAs? Forbes spotlights the billionaires bankrolling Republicans.

Need a better understanding of social media? Let Black Dynamite show you the way. Nab Bernie Madoff's velveteen slippers and 10.5-carat diamond ring at auction. The Harvard Club of New York rejected Eliot Spitzer's membership application because of the prostitution scandal that ended his governorship. Henry Blodget rightly calls the move "pathetic." Facebook filed three lawsuits of its own today, and if history is any indicator, they'll prove costly to their defendants. Wells Fargo gets Fortune's nomination for least bad big bank. Two years after the last MacBook Air hit the shelves, a redesigned model is out and Mac addicts are head over heels. Guy Hands spends a second day in court, reliving the worst investment of his career: buying EMI Group. CNBC's John Carney to Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon: "Michael Bloomberg will never be President of the United States." Google engineer Brian Kennish has built a way to disconnect from Facebook Connect.

Time to panic. Goldman posts "ordinary" results... ..including private equity investments that paid off. Paul Graham on the new funding landscape. Chris Dixon on Paul Graham writing about the new funding landscape. Remember that little Facebook privacy breach the Journal reported Sunday night? Facebook and Zynga are now facing lawsuits as a result. What is Steve Jobs so afraid of? Holy data plans. A stunning 6.1 trillion text messages will be sent this year, says a new study. Tribune CEO and former DJ Randy Michaels is "still working," though not for long if his board gets its way. EMC and Dell try patching up their relationship. Why Jamie Dimon doesn't expect a double dip.

Ever wish you were dating yourself? Too big to sail? Vanity Fair takes us through the world of today's super yachts. Driven by the iPad, media tablet sales are on pace to reach nearly 20 million by year end, according to Gartner Group. The world richest man says of charity that it "doesn't solve anything." UC Berkeley visiting scholar Vivek Wadhwa asks again (this time on CNBC): "Where are the women entrepreneurs?" How about making mobile apps suck less offline; would that be possible? Fortune highlights 10 "rising stars" who just missed inclusion in its top 40 young business leaders list. The back story of how Steven Rattner became Mike Bloomberg's money manager. Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial and housing crisis fame has finally settled with the SEC.

Google is developing self-driving cars and investing in wind farms, but it hasn't lost its focus. So suggest newly released numbers, including income, which is up a stunning 32% from last year. Skype gets serious Facebook integration. (This is big.) The party is over for Steve Rattner, but the SEC can't seem to quit him. It's also over (for now) for Andrew Fashion, a Web entrepreneur who earned $2.5 million by his 21st birthday, then promptly blew it all. In a familiar refrain, Seagate receives a buyout offer. The hot money? It's on Poland, argues the Financial Times. John Sculley -- the exec who famously pushed Steve Jobs out of Apple years ago -- is now talking about the secrets to Jobs' success (which, I'm sure Steve Jobs just loves). Speaking of Apple: Run, do not walk. For one week, you can trade in your old iPod for a hundred bucks.

Kleiner Perkins makes a killing off its investment in mobile game maker Ngmoco, just two years after backing the company. Meanwhile, Seattle VCs are finding good deals -- just not in Seattle. Dealbook senses another buyout coming on. Is Officemax the next to go? Harvard versus Stanford: Which builds a better entrepreneur? When to dump your date: Litmus tests in the age of Facebook. Business Insider makes the case for why Microsoft should spend billions of dollars for Adobe. Wall Street pay reaches a stunning $144 billion.

Show me the $$$: Venture-backed CEOs expect to be paid -- well. CalPERS just fired its longtime investment advisor, Pacific Corporate Group of La Jolla, Calif. More details here. Liz Gannes reports that Malaysians are social butterflies, while Japanese are online loners. What investors can learn from TPG's "adventures" in Russia. Is Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, going to sell or is he enjoying his freedom too much? Tired of getting lost at Dulles? Find your way through airports and malls with a cell phone map. U.K. business leaders are calling for an end to banker bashing. In effort to rein in employee stock sales, Facebook and Zynga are imposing steep per transaction fees. Today's biopic? "The Social Network." Tomorrow's biopic? It may be "College Republicans," starring, cough, Shia LaBeouf as a young Karl Rove.

That was fast: Yahoo is contemplating a bid for Groupon for up to $2 billion, reports AllThingsD. BusinessInsider provides 100 million reasons why the deal would make sense. Morgan Stanley creates a new recruitment video; it is appropriately ridiculed. Microsoft employees famously have among the best health benefits in the world -- all covered by Microsoft -- but that's about to change. Speaking of healthcare, 9.5 million Americans are now working part-time so employers can avoid paying for theirs. In happier news, Bank of America (finally) halts foreclosure sales. (Thank you, Jon Stewart.) Entrepreneur Adeo Ressi's Founder Institute is looking to incubate 50 Seattle startups. (You can apply here.)

In news of the weird, "CHiPs," and "Dallas" TV stars are making headlines for their roles in a couple of financial messes. Is Genzyme playing too hard to get? For the second time, it has rejected a takeover bid from Sanofi-Aventis of France. Another celebrity scandal (sort of): Personal finance talk show host is charged with fraud by the SEC. Mark Zuckerberg as rapper. (At the office, might want to keep the volume on the DL, yo.) Facebook cofounder Sean Parker donates $100,000 to a California initiative to legalize marijuana. Because people don't already associate Parker with drugs(!). The hedge fund manager who confused himself for a superhero. Was Jason Calacanis forced to join a NAMBLA Facebook Group? He says yes; Fast Company says no. (Drama!) Why Wall Street treats Microsoft like yesterday's news.